


Walking off the Beaten Path

by LetsJustWrite



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Aromantic Luna Lovegood, Autistic Luna Lovegood, Autistic Neville Longbottom, Gen, aromantic Rolf Scamander
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 16:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16043771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetsJustWrite/pseuds/LetsJustWrite
Summary: Luna was somehow different than everyone else and she didn't understand quite how or why, but she knew she had friends.





	Walking off the Beaten Path

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Romantic Love and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks (Through the Years)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15137411) by [Crimson_Square](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimson_Square/pseuds/Crimson_Square). 



> This was inspired by Romantic Love and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks (Through the Years) by Crimson_Square which is so much better than anything I could ever write so do go read that.

Luna was crooked. Somehow her mind walked just a little off the path where everyone else’s mind walked. When she was little her mother had told her that it was everyone else that had trouble keeping up to her, but by now she knew it was she who had trouble keeping up to everyone else.

She didn’t understand why the words wouldn’t roll off her tongue just like they did for other people. Why she had to talk in riddles and round-about ways and quotes she’d heard other people say. Why she always seemed tongue-tied.

And she didn’t understand why she couldn’t understand other people. Everyone else seemed to understand each other just fine so why couldn’t she?

She had friends who always made room for her, made sure she was in the conversation, but she still felt left behind so often.

Ginny had never understood. She was nice to Luna and talked to her, but Luna sometimes wondered if she hadn’t known Ginny from when they were little would Ginny have been friends with her? Might she even have called her Loony Luna?

Harry didn’t quite understand either but he understood better than Ginny. He understood when she casually mentioned the bullying that it did hurt her-she just wasn’t allowed to show that (she wasn’t sure why she wasn’t allowed to show that, just that she was bullied worse when she was).

Neville understood. She was mad at herself that she hadn’t noticed him hanging around the fringes so often just like people never noticed her. But when she did notice him and they began talking she realized he understood.

Just like her he had trouble getting the words out of his mouth. There would be days and days when he didn’t talk at all and most of the time when he talked he stuttered. Except when he talked about Herbology. When you could get him to talk about Herbology the words just flowed out of his mouth. Luna knew that nobody could know anything about one subject, but she thought that Neville probably knew better than anyone about Herbology.

She was surprised though when he developed a crush on Hannah Abbott. She’d thought people like her just didn’t fall in love, that that was part of the crooked path they walked. Neville always made sure to include her still, just like Harry and Ginny did, but so much of his time was spent in being with Hannah. Luna knew she was a third wheel.

She buried herself in her work, going out on longer and longer expeditions to study magical creatures. And it was on one of those expeditions she met Rolf Scamander. He was like her. Not like Neville was like her, his mind didn’t walk off the path like theirs did, but seemed to march in tune with everybody else. But he had never fallen in love. And wasn’t planning to.

She laughed and they both drank cheap German beer until they couldn’t walk straight anymore, and she was so, so happy because now she had two people like her. And because she knew Rolf would always stay a friend without leaving her as a third wheel.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: crooked


End file.
